


Lexicon, or, The Virtue of Specificity

by cygnes



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 21:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3224678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diction in the context of four conversations Victor Frankenstein has: with Sembene, with Vanessa, with Malcolm, and with Caliban.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lexicon, or, The Virtue of Specificity

**Author's Note:**

> Definitions are adapted from the Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles, third edition with corrections and revised addenda, 1955. (Mostly that means I expanded abbreviations to full words/phrases and omitted the original spellings of Greek words because I lack the keyboard capabilities and linguistic knowledge.)
> 
> There’s some weird slight Vanessa/Victor stuff, but it’s not really romantic? And also not explicitly sexual. Only the Tarot knows what’s up with them.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/107904389725/fic-lexicon-or-the-virtue-of-specificity) on tumblr.
> 
> Full list of content warnings can be found in the endnote.

>   
>  **Murder** , substantive. Also (now dialectically and historically or archaically) murther. 1. The most heinous kind of criminal homicide; an instance of this. In English law, defined as the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought; often wilful murder. 

It is dim and quiet in the basement of the Murray townhouse. Victor is accustomed to low light. His attic laboratory doesn’t have as many windows as he would like, either, but he always manages. He is beginning to think, in fact, that his research will never see the light of day in any sense of the phrase. But his eyes are still sharp.

Sembene stands under an arch. His eyes are sharp, too, for all that he is much older and has seen much more. He doesn’t ask questions as Victor performs the autopsy but his gaze follows the movements of scalpel, pins, fingers. The body is very fresh—a prize specimen, under other circumstances. But this woman would not have been suitable. Miss Ives saw her in a dream, and later on the street, while she still lived. Briefly, anyway. Long enough to witness her death. That connection alone, to someone he knows and who knows him, would have made the body impossible to safely claim. And there is something else: Victor is not afraid, but he does not feel easy. The lungs do not inflate, the heart does not beat, there is no unusual responsiveness. Somehow it still feels like a vivisection.

"Is it murder if the person who dies was about to die anyway? If they would only have died more slowly, more painfully, unaided?" He speaks mostly to remind himself that he is not alone. He does not expect an answer from Sembene, who almost always lets the weight of his solemn presence speak for him.

"Ending a life with intent is always murder," Sembene says. The words seem to come from the stones around him and Victor looks up. "Whether you cut the throat or you are miles away. If you cause a death, and mean to, that will follow you." Victor feels a tremor, a vibration, along the diaphragm, but he can’t be sure whether that is his own hand shaking. "I suppose you must ask yourself whether you meant to ease their suffering or your own, in hurrying such a death."

"Yes, that would be the ethical quandary, wouldn’t it," Victor says. He ignores the way Sembene had moved from the abstract to address him directly because to think about that would draw his concentration from the task at hand. There is movement in the lower abdomen, definite this time and almost visible under the skin. Victor makes a new incision and carefully, methodically, tracks the source.

There are two asps in the woman’s uterus, still living, sleepily entwined. Sebene beheads them both neatly before either can strike.

—

>   
>  **Nymphomania**. 1775. [Formed on the Greek for bride or nymph + madness.] In pathology, a feminine disease characterized by morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire. Hence nymphomaniac, adjective and substantive.
> 
> **Satyriasis**. 1657. [Modern Latin , adoption of Greek satyr + suffix -asis, used in forming the names of diseases.] In pathology, excessively great sexual desire in the male.
> 
> **Nympholept** , substantive and adjective. 1813. [Adoption of a Greek word meaning caught by nymphs, formed on nymph + to take.] 1. substantive. One who is inspired by a violent enthusiasm, especially for an unattainable ideal.

The door to the small study at the back of the house stands ajar and unguarded. Victor half expects to find it empty—he was not formally announced. They do not stand on ceremony now, not after all the secrets they hold for one another.

"Miss Ives?" The appearance of polite distance in forms of address remains. As it must.

"Doctor, do come in." She sits behind the table, facing away from the door. Her hands are folded delicately, resting atop what he knows to be a deck of cards. Despite her permission, Victor feels that he is trespassing. This room is her sanctum sanctorum, meant to be entirely hers for all that she does not own the house around it.

"I expect you’ve been informed of the state of the body," Victor says.

"Yes, Sembene told me yesterday. That unfortunate woman." There is some real pang of pity, or of simple sorrow, in her voice. But it is gone as quickly as it came. Vanessa looks up at him with a neutral expression. "That isn’t all you’ve come to discuss, I presume."

"No," Victor says. "I was hoping I might have a private conversation with you." He looks pointedly at the door. She follows his gaze and nods. He shuts the door quietly. "A conversation of a—delicate nature," he adds carefully. Vanessa smiles and it is a distant, rueful thing. She looks away.

"I cannot very well deny you that," she says, her voice pitched low. "As you have seen me at my worst and helped me to survive it."

"Please, Miss Ives, if you consider it an obligation, I would rather not," Victor says. Vanessa looks up. "As you may remember, I prefer to avoid consulting an alienist whenever possible. On my own behalf as well as yours." She smiles as he says it, this time with some amusement. At his discomfort, at the situation, at regaining the upper hand—Victor isn’t sure. But he doubts that she means to put him at ease.

"Will you sit, then?"

He does, in a chair opposite hers. The air of the room feels still and close, for all that there is a table and several feet beside between them.

"Should I adopt an Austrian accent, or may we begin as is?" Vanessa says. It may be mockery but it does not sting.

"I have been troubled with intrusive, distracting, and altogether inappropriate thoughts. Were I a woman, I would no doubt be diagnosed with hysterical nymphomania."

"So you thought you might seek counsel from someone who has been treated for hysteria," Vanessa says witheringly. She begins to shuffle the cards without looking at them. The movements of her wrists are sharp.

"Yes," Victor says, and frowns. "No. I mean to say—I am not acquainted with very many people. Not on such terms of intimacy as would brook this discussion."

"And your other friends’ advice would be unsuitable," Vanessa says. Some of her disdain has ebbed. "Mr. Chandler would advise visiting a brothel, perhaps. And Sir Malcom? God only knows. Nothing pleasant." She lays out the top three cards and frowns. She slides them back into the middle of the deck and then her hands are still again. "May I ask how you came to a diagnosis of nymphomania? Instead of, say, satyriasis?"

Victor is surprised she knows the word, but nothing by now ought to surprise him about Vanessa Ives. “Satyriasis is perhaps more technically accurate,” he admits, “but it lacks the certain connotation of indiscriminateness that nymphomania has.”

"When you say indiscriminate—"

"Where sex of hypothetical partners is concerned. I cannot rightly consider myself a sodomite in light of my continued attraction to women."

"Or without having committed an act of sodomy," Vanessa says coolly. "The term condemns an action, not a thought."

"Hence another reason to call it nymphomania."

"Is that all?" She has begun to shuffle the cards again."I must say, I was expecting worse. I would sooner call you a nympholept for your dedication to research than I would a nymphomaniac. Desire, in my experience, can be fluid." Her tone is matter-of-fact and not unfriendly. Victor’s gaze catches on the long white curve of her neck before settling on her hands. That is safer. "Does it surprise you that I don’t consider yours to be a terrible affliction?"

"Yes," Victor says.

"In your place, I would be more worried about the morphine."

Victor’s arms are covered and he is sure that he never confided that in her. Perhaps Sir Malcolm has mentioned it; perhaps he is beginning to look unwell. Perhaps she learned through other means.

"I’ll bear that in mind."

"Will you? I’d be surprised if you did. None of my advice will be what you want to hear." Vanessa lays the cards out in three neat piles of approximately the same size. "You’ve seen enough not to be so skeptical of this, I hope." The cards will always be an object of trepidation. In his mind’s eye they still crawl with spiders. "Come stand behind me, doctor." His fear is childish and unscientific and he masters it enough to obey. Enough to choose the leftmost pile of cards.

Vanessa takes the top three and places them in a row. She turns them over one by one.

On the left: the five of cups. “This has been difficult for you. Being so long unfulfilled. Longer than I thought.”

In the center: the ace of pentacles. “But you have an opportunity. Here and now.”

On the right: the High Priestess. It shows spread legs framing the skull of a bull.

Vanessa looks back at him, drawing long fingers over the last card as she turns in her chair.

"Did you come seeking more than my counsel?"

"No, Miss Ives. Of course not. Is that what you think of me?"

"You have clean hands and few moral compunctions and you enjoy Romantic poetry. You know very well what I think of you." Her smile now is one he has seen before, but never for him. Something slow and dark; something with intent and without malice or kindness. "But I’m never sure what you think of me."

"If I have offended you, I am sorry," Victor says. "I’ll go." He does not. Vanessa’s smile holds him like a fly in amber.

—

>   
>  **Preux** , adjective. 1771. [French, regular phonetic descendant of late Latin prodis.] Brave, valiant, gallant; chiefly in preux chevalier, gallant knight.

It is almost too dark to see, but the lamps are not yet all lit. By now it seems that Victor’s feet can carry him to Sir Malcolm’s door without aid from his other senses. Still he hesitates in the square. He has never paid a strictly social call. Sembene opens the door before Victor has decided whether to knock or abandon the scheme.

"Come in," Sembene says. It is not an invitation. "You are beginning to look suspicious. Miss Ives will not be down for some time yet." As soon as the front door is closed, he gestures toward what Victor still thinks of as the map room, though it is now entirely free of maps.

"I can’t wait in the hall?" Victor says.

"You could," Sir Malcolm says from behind him. He moves stealthily even in his own house: always the big game hunter. He strides past Victor into the mapless room even as Victor turns to look at him. "But there is only one fire lit on the ground floor tonight, and it’s in here."

"Sensible," Victor agrees, and follows. The fire in the grate is small and the late winter cold looms large. Sembene didn’t take his coat when he came inside and the chill makes him loath to take it off now, but he doesn’t want to be rude. Tonight that seems to matter.

"Vanessa tells me you’re playing the preux chevalier and squiring her to the Honorable Miss Wotton’s salon." Sir Malcolm pauses and looks over at Victor with a frown. Or perhaps he’s frowning to see such a shabby greatcoat folded over the back of his impeccably preserved sofa. "I don’t know if you’d be familiar with the phrase."

"Preux chevalier? From the French, yes. I’ve heard it." The condescension is so staggering that Victor doesn’t react at all. Of course he’s familiar with French and German besides the requisite schoolroom Latin and Greek. It’s the only way to keep up with international advances in any of the natural sciences. Not that chivalry comes up often in research publications, but he’s not close-minded enough to purposely limit his vocabulary to strict necessities.

"Miss Wotton is nowhere near as depraved as her cousin, but I would be cautious tonight. There will certainly be some degenerates in attendance. It would be best for Vanessa to restrict herself to more respectable company. You might facilitate that." Sir Malcolm pour two glasses of brandy and holds one out to Victor.

"I don’t think drinking right now is a good idea," Victor says. The cut crystal snifters catch the firelight like a prism, throwing beads of light onto the walls and furniture. Fairy lights, he thinks. It takes him a moment to remember whose words those were.

"She won’t mind," Sir Malcolm assures him.

"I mind," Victor says. He is considering respiratory response to a combination of opiates and alcohol. It wouldn’t kill him, in this quantity, but it might make the evening unpleasant. "And I doubt I have any power to restrict the scope of Miss Ives’ social circle."

Sir Malcolm looks grim as he sets one snifter down on an end table. He brings the other to his lips. “In that case, I do not see the use of your going at all.”

"You’re not the one who invited me," Victor says. He holds his peace as Sir Malcolm sips his brandy.

"That’s the suit I sent you," Sir Malcolm observes at last.

"Yes."

"It fits you well."

"I have you to thank for that." Victor knows he will be found wanting. It only remains to see how.

"I’ve always had a good eye. I ordered several dresses for Vanessa and she seemed to find them… adequate." It is a strange thing for Sir Malcolm to have done for a woman who is neither his daughter nor his wife. Stranger still for him to admit so freely to this presumption. Does it not strike him that she must accept the dresses as ‘adequate’ to her needs, in her situation? She is not a kept woman in the conventional sense—indeed, she may have some means and property of her own—but she could not possibly refuse such a gift from the man on whose hospitality she relies.

Not quite like an anatomist with only three shirts and two waistcoats in his closet and his own drafty garret to call home. Their situations are not alike or even analogous. But Sir Malcolm must know that his material gifts are burdens of another kind to Victor and to Vanessa.

"You haven’t had it cleaned, have you?" Sir Malcolm says. He does not sneer. He observes with distant severity, like a tutor to a difficult pupil.

"I only wore it the once," Victor says. But it had been raining, and then he had been distracted.

"It is not dirty," Sir Malcolm muses, looking him over. "But the waistcoat is terribly creased. And you haven’t so much as brushed the suit. I’ll ring for Mason and see if there’s anything to be done." This is where Victor would protest, except curiosity wins out, as it often does.

"Mason?"

"Valet, footman, man-of-all-work. The servants all remain belowstairs unless they are called for or the house is empty. It’s only Mason, Mrs. Ayres, and Susan, but nothing would get done without them," Sir Malcolm says. Odd to think of these people so close and yet complete strangers. Victor remembers servants in his father’s house. Nurses, maids, footmen, grooms. But the Murray townhouse had seemed somehow like an island, entirely self-contained and self-sustaining. Giving the matter any consideration he might have supposed the truth. Sembene is less a servant than a guardian, and no one person could possibly have maintained the household.

The man who enters is jarringly unfamiliar. Freckled and solidly built, with his red hair brilliantined, Mason does not fit with the gloom.

"Couldn’t iron it, sir, that’d take too long to heat up if Miss Ives means to leave within the half-hour," Mason says in a subdued Yorkshire accent. "I’ll have the brush in a moment, sir. Don’t know what else can be done." Mason darts back out.

"Those weeks, when we were all here and Miss Ives was—unwell—" Victor says, unsure how to phrase it.

"Sent off to prepare the country house for an extended stay and told to remain while Vanessa and I were abroad," Sir Malcolm says. "They know it was a ruse, but they are at least well-bred enough not to ask. None of them has any family to gossip to. I made sure of that when they were hired."

People who wouldn’t go telling tales are also people who won’t be missed. Victor thinks of himself and Ethan. There is a pattern emerging. Victor is proficient in five languages but more importantly he knows how to create a whole from disparate parts. The picture of Sir Malcolm that emerges is ever more unsettling.

Mason returns and brushes down Victor’s suit with brisk, smooth strokes. He doesn’t see much of a difference, but Mason nods approvingly at his handiwork.

"Better, sir, better. And no one’ll notice the waistcoat with Miss Ives on your arm. A very handsome woman, sir. If you don’t mind my saying." Mason says this all to Victor, speaking softly as he stands close. Victor holds his head up and keeps his shoulders straight.

"She is, Mr. Mason," Victor says. "If either of us has the right to notice, I’m not sure."

"That will be all," Sir Malcolm says. He is so used to being obeyed that it hardly sounds like an order.

—

>   
>  **Abortion**. 1547. [Adaptation of the Latin abortionem.] 1. Giving untimely birth to offspring; the procuring of premature delivery so as to destroy offspring. Also in figurative use 1710. 2. In biology, arrest of development of any organ, 1842. 3. The imperfect offspring of a miscarriage; hence used figuratively of the result of any action, 1640.
> 
> **Infanticide**. 1656. [Anglo-French, adaptation of late Latin infanticidium.] The killing of infants, especially the killing of new-born infants, as a custom among savages, and in the ancient world. b. Specifically the crime of murdering an infant after its birth, perpetrated by or with the consent of its parents, especially the mother, 1789.
> 
> **Fratricide**. 1568. [Anglo-French, adaptation of the Latin fratricidium, from frater + -cidere.] The action of killing one’s brother. (In Law also the killing of one’s sister.)

The creature comes and goes from the laboratory as he pleases. More often than not, Victor will return to find him in silent contemplation of the female specimen. He often forgets to call her Miss Croft even in his own mind. Perhaps she will not be entirely Miss Croft when she next wakes, reduced as she is now to baser parts (bone and meat and blood).

"What else is needed?" says the creature. He calls himself Caliban. It’s a strangely appropriate name, but it is as hard to attach to the creature as it is to associate Miss Croft with the corpse on the slab. The creature never asks how long it will be, only what else is needed. Victor fears his impatience, and not for his own sake. He thinks that one day he may find all the necessary organs in a heap, still steaming, if he does not finish the work soon enough.

"The lungs are the only truly vital replacement left. I’ve been looking for a healthy set, but everyone in this godforsaken city seems to have had some kind of respiratory malady," Victor says.

"Bad air," the creature says.

"Bad hygiene, more likely," Victor says.

"You need them soon," the creature says. His eyes are fixed on the corpse’s face. "Or she will rot, and you will have to start over." Victor refuses to contemplate that possibility.

"If you had stayed your hand, you might have had a companion already," Victor says. He thinks the creature might strike him for saying so, but he only looks up from the dead woman with tired eyes. "Proteus might have loved you, as a friend, if not a mate in the reproductive sense." The late Miss Croft was barren. Victor does not intend to correct this flaw in Nature’s original design, nor does he intend to tell his first creation. Better to let him think it a flaw inherent in the process.

"Might have," the creature echoes. "As if you would not have turned him against me."

"I say ‘might have’ because we will never know," Victor says. "Your mate might not love you. It will depend on how you treat her and her own temperament."

"Did you know her?" the creature asks.

"Only slightly."

"Was she kind?" There is something pathetic in the creature’s way of asking, but Victor is not moved to pity.

"From what I saw, yes. But she loved another, deeply, up until her death. She may remember him." If she consents, she and the creature will have to leave London. If she were to be recognized—it’s another possibility that Victor doesn’t want to consider.

"I remembered nothing," the creature says with a frown.

"Proteus did." That day at the docks, his last day, he remembered a wife. He became conscious that he was something unlike those around him. It was terrifying, but fascinating, to see that dawning comprehension.

"My God, demon, must you always turn to talk of him? As if you canonized him for the mere tragedy of his abortion—" The creature is finally angry now. So is Victor.

"Don’t use that word. Even if you consider the process of resurrection to be a second birth, it is wrong to call it that. Had you ripped him apart while he was still on the slab, that might have been an abortion, I grant you, but that time had passed. He lived and thought, unaided. If anything, you committed infanticide." Victor plunges his shaking hands into a basin of water. He will get no more work done today.

"Was it an infant that you abandoned, at the hour of my birth?" the creature says softly, venemously.

"You must at least consider it fratricide, if nothing else."

"I had thought myself a new Adam, but in your eyes I am a new Cain. Killer of my favored brother. Fitting, I suppose, as I am already doomed to wander and my appearance marks me out as abhorrent." The creature moves to stand beside him. "You must remember that even Cain had a wife."

Victor doesn’t think it will be so easy as that.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for non-graphic description of an autopsy, discussion of murder, body horror, historical medical misogyny (pathologizing female sexuality, not institutionalization stuff, in this instance), casual cissexism, mentions of addiction, antiquated and derisive terminology for male homosexuality, manipulation/proprietary attitudes of the sort everyone should expect from Sir Malcolm by now, figurative discussion of abortion and child death, some denial of personhood stuff with Caliban.


End file.
